Successful Blogging

I wish blogging came naturally to me. I would love to be one of those people who can just throw a few random thoughts together and have a readable post. In the same way fashion bloggers make their outfit of the day look like something they just threw on, a good blog has a certain element of effortlessness to it.

Over the last few years blogging has seen a surge in popularity. Everyone's in on it. Forget your brief affair with live journal or your stint on teen open diary (yes, I am guilty of both), blogging is the grown up way to express yourself. For rants you want to spare your friends from or anecdotes that would make your boss blush, welcome to the blogosphere: a place where you're pretty much free to say whatever you like (not least because, in my case anyway, no one is actually listening).

Blogging can introduce you to a haven of like minded people, especially if you have a particularly unusual hobby (or if your friends just don't understand why you insist on photographing everything you eat). Those who are good enough may even be able to make a bit of money through advertising and sponsorship (and possibly nab tickets to London Fashion Week if they're very lucky).

When I look at the kinds of blogs I most enjoy, it's not necessarily those which talk about exciting events or debate-worthy topics. Often I am attracted to the ones that cover the day to day workings of the blogger's life. I like to read about their outfits and what they had for tea last night. I like to see people's week in pictures, even when they include snaps of left over takeaway and their pet cat. I'm not alone in relishing the mundane details of someone else's day. When one of my friends first introduced me to the world of blogging, she told me how she loved those that let you peer inside the life of the writer and recommended a host of blogs which allowed me to do just that. Fast forward a year and I have accumulated an awful lot of knowledge about other people's eating habits, relationships and other such trivia.

Regardless of the writer's style, the general consenus is that it takes time (lots and lots of time) to become 'established' in the blogosphere. One of my favourite bloggers, Muireann Carey-Campbell, never hides the fact that it took a hell of a lot of hard work to gain her impressive following and the author of daisybutter even has a page of tips for those wanting to take a leaf out of her, beautifully constructed, blog.

Despite success often seeming like a near impossible quest, I love that it's a challenge open to anyone. Those who post daily outfit photos aren't necessarily six foot stick insects and the blogger I follow who posts her own mega-healthy recipes and workouts probably wasn't born with an appetite for superfoods and a love of the gym. Blogging allows you to reinvent yourself in front of people who don't know your flaws and the internet breaks down a lot of barriers leaving us free to showcase whatever we want (and to hide the not-so-good bits if we choose).

I may be rambling away to nobody for the next few years however at least I can take comfort in the fact that the bloggers I avidly follow probably weren't so different when they first started out. Plus there's thousands more like me who are just happy to blog for the sake of blogging.